Copyright & Permissions

I've been really struggling at work lately with copyright & fair use. Library administration takes a very conservative view towards fair use and want the faculty to secure permissions from copyright holders before using materials in the classroom. Although the library is willing to do all the research and make contact with the copyright holders, and pay any royalties from our own budget, many professors resent waiting for this process.

I had some interesting and surprising results last week when seeking permissions for two faculty members.

Each person wanted to go to Blockbusters and rent a DVD to show to their classes. Professor A wanted to show "The Motorcycle Diaries", the Hollywood film about Che Guevara, to a communications class. Professor Z wanted to show "Street Fight", a documentary about the Newark NJ mayor election race, to his political science class. The library's policy is to discourage anyone from showing a rental or personal copy to a class. Instead, I offer to purchase the film for the professor and add it to the library collection.

Whenever I purchase the film, I have to also ask permission to have it shown in a college classroom. Usually, I expect to pay for this privilege from the library's budget.

To my great surprise, I bought "Motorcycle Diaries" from Barnes & Noble for $15.00 and was able to get permissions from Universal for a classroom only showing --- free of charge.

But "Street Fight" was a different story. I could buy the film for $25.00, directly from the filmmaker, Marshall Curry. But the restriction on Curry's website was that the film was for home use only. Purchases for "Educational Use" were directed to bullfrogfilms.com, which charged the library $295.00 for the same film!